1. This invention generally relates to a registration system for portable articles of personal property, particularly personal computers and laptop computers and, more particularly, to an identification system for readily identifying the rightful owner of stolen articles of personal property which have been recovered by law enforcement authorities or agencies.
2. Description of Related Art
To deter crime, especially the theft of articles of personal property from households by burglars, it has been proposed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,336,754, to physically mark articles of personal property with identification codes which may readily be correlated with registered owners of the articles. The registered owner etches or engraves the code on the article with the aid of a tool and a stencil guide. A registry assigns a unique code for each owner and keeps a record of the assigned rightful owners. In the event that law enforcement personnel recover such etched or engraved stolen property, the registry can inform the law enforcement personnel as to the identity of the rightful owner so that arrangements can be made to return the stolen property.
Although generally satisfactory for its intended purpose of deterring theft, experience has shown that physical marking schemes have not proven altogether desirable or effective in practice, because thieves often remove or deface the etched or engraved codes from the articles of personal property sought to be protected. As a result, any such recovered goods cannot be readily traced back to the rightful owner because the significance of the marking after having been removed or defaced is not readily apparent to law enforcement personnel.
Personal computers or laptop computers, because of their increasing popularity and highly portable nature, are particularly susceptible to theft. For multi-component computers, computer thieves typically steal only the main processor, leaving behind the extra weight of the less valuable keyboard and monitor. Experience has shown, however, that many users forget to mark the main processor or forget to mark all of the components of the computer, thereby failing in the main objective of deterring theft.